


An Unconventional Barber

by mistyzeo



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Established Relationship, Established Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Facial Shaving, Frottage, M/M, Oral Sex, Pubic Hair, Shaving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-29 14:03:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10855497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistyzeo/pseuds/mistyzeo
Summary: In the absence of other stimulation, Holmes fixates upon Watson shaving. Watson obliges by shaving him everywhere.





	An Unconventional Barber

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bilbos_pantaloons](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bilbos_pantaloons/gifts).
  * Translation into Русский available: [Нетрадиционный парикмахер](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11143896) by [Little_Unicorn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Little_Unicorn/pseuds/Little_Unicorn)



> Gratitude to Elly, for whom this fic is written, and my Patreon supporters: Clementine, Emily, Heather, Rachel, Jaradel, and all the rest. Also to Dee for the read-through! Remaining sloppiness is all me.

There are and will always be things about John Watson that amaze me: his endless compassion for his fellow human being; his capacity to be astonished by me time and time again; his lamentable talent with a pen that renders us monthly the focus of a great deal of public interest, despite his also-notable penchant for lying professionally. These things strike me as amazing at any time, but then there are the things that render me speechless unexpectedly: a specific angle of sunlight in his fair hair; his cheeky smile after a particularly good witticism; the touch of his lips on the back of my neck. Every day I am reminded what a fortunate man I am to have been interrupted in the middle of my haemoglobin experiment to meet him.

I awoke one morning after a long, drawn-out case with a bone-deep feeling of lassitude, the sun spilling through a gap in the curtains, and the pillow next to mine already cool. I could hear the gentle splash of water in the basin on the dressing table, and the clink of metal against the ceramic bowl. I smelled Watson’s soap, newly frothed, and breathed in deeply as I stretched my arms over my head.

When I opened my eyes, he was smiling at me in the mirror. He had a towel draped over his shoulder and there was shaving cream on the left side of his face. His straight razor was held aloft.

“Good morning,” said he. “Sleep well?”

“Hmm,” I agreed, curling myself around his pillow and burying my face in it. I _had_ slept well; the conclusion of a good puzzle meant that all my self-denial caught up with me, and I had a tendency to eat like a baby elephant and sleep like the dead after a case. I could also feel the lingering effects of a satisfying romp in bed with my dearest companion, and it elevated my mood still further.

My mood wasn’t the only thing elevated. My prick stirred at the reminder of the night before, and I shifted my hips beneath the quilt, relishing the low throb of arousal.

Watson had returned his attention to his shave, tipping his head up and touching his naked blade to the underside of his chin. The rasp of steel against his skin made me focus again, and I watched him with growing interest as he scraped his face clean and smooth.

He was very precise with it, as with everything he does, his brow furrowed in concentration and his hands steady. He’d had those hands all over me last night, and in some places I could still feel the pressure of them. I rolled onto my back, still watching him, and pushed one hand under my head to improve my angle. The other hand I found was drawn downwards, beneath the quilt, until it rested atop the jut of my erection through my nightshirt.

Watson’s eyes met mine again and he raised an eyebrow at me, perhaps asking what I thought I was staring at. I shrugged in answer, squeezing myself under the blankets.

He hadn’t seen that yet; with his back to me he really could only see my face. I bit my lip, hoping it might give him a hint, but he was focused on his razor once more. He shaved his cheek, the corner of his jaw, and I watched him carefully measure the length of his sideburns with the flat of the blade. Then he wiped the traces of shaving lather off his face with the towel, feeling for rough places. He found two, reapplied the soap, and scraped them down to the skin. The wet cloth followed, and then he bent close to the mirror to trim the bristle of his moustache with a pair of short scissors.

All the while, I fondled myself through my nightshirt, growing more and more intent on my seduction. He hadn’t the slightest idea what he was in for the moment he turned around. My heartbeat thumped in my throat and between my legs. I let my head fall flat back onto the pillow, losing a little of my view for the added benefit of fingers on my left nipple.

Watson cleared his throat, startling me, and turned on the seat. He slapped his hands down on his trouser knees, making to stand, but stopped dead as he took in the sight of me, frigging myself beneath the blankets and staring at him.

“Ah,” he said. “I was going to suggest we go out for breakfast, but I see you are engaged.”

I snorted and reached my less-occupied hand out toward him. “Breakfast can wait.”

“Insatiable,” he said, crossing the distance between the bench and the bed in barely a step, crawling onto the blankets and pinning me beneath them. He bent to kiss me, and the smell of his soap up close made me hum with pleasure. His lips were soft and warm, and I cupped his smooth face in my hand and rubbed my thumb against the corner of his neat moustache.

His collar still sat on the dressing table, and his top two shirt buttons were undone, so I pushed my hand down the back of it and squeezed the muscle in his shoulder. He kissed me deeper, his tongue pressing between my lips, and I could taste the soap at the corners of his mouth. It was sharp and bitter; I pulled him closer.

He went down on one elbow above me, laughing against my mouth, and tipped his head back. “You’re quite serious,” he said, looking into my eyes.

“Quite,” I agreed, and squirmed under the blankets, trying to get enough leverage to push my hips up against his body. I was securely fixed to the bed.

Instead of letting me up, he swung his leg over my hips and sat, trapping my hand, still wrapped half around my cock, against my body, immobile. I wriggled my hand out and pulled my arms free of the blankets so that I could wrap them around his shoulders instead.

We kissed again, my hands clenching in the fabric of his shirt. I found the leather of his braces and pulled on them, which made him laugh and grind his hips down against mine. I wanted to unfasten them at the back and get my hands down his trousers, but I didn’t have the leverage.

“John, please,” I said, squirming beneath him.

“Please what?” He grinned at me. “Isn’t this what you were hoping for?”

“It’s very promising,” I admitted. I stroked his clean-shaven cheeks and kissed them.

“I suppose you’d like some sort of definitive conclusion,” he said, rocking his hips again. The bulk of his groin rubbed along the line of my cock, and I shuddered.

“Yes, please.”

He sighed, as if my demands were in any way inconvenient to him, as if his own prick wasn’t a hard ridge against mine, and began to move back and forth atop me, grinding us together. I clung to him, kissing him frantically, my hands on his face and his back and running up and down his ribs. I pushed my fingers into his hair, ruining that part of his morning routine, and let the orgasm build hot and heavy in my gut.

His breathing was growing heavy, his kisses uncoordinated, but he wasn’t going to let himself come off in his trousers, and anyway I couldn’t wait for him. I was gasping, groaning his name, and then all at once my climax reached its peak. I spilled on my belly, dirtying my nightshirt and almost bucking Watson off in the frenzy of my orgasm.

He was laughing at me as I relaxed again, panting. He pushed my hair out of my face and kissed me gently, and then levered himself off my lap and sat beside me. His cock was hard behind his flies, and a spot of moisture was visible on the fabric.

“Do you want--” I gasped, “Can I--?”

“No, it’s all right,” he said, palming himself and giving his prick a squeeze. “I’ll survive. I’m starving, actually. I was waiting for you to wake up.”

“Oh, John,” I said, struggling to a sitting position. My nightshirt was wet and beginning to stick to my skin. “You should have said.”

He put two fingers under my chin and kissed me to shut me up. “You’re irresistible,” he said, “and I’m a weak man. But now I’m ravenous and you’re awake and satisfied, so I insist that we go out.”

“Very well,” I agreed, as my own stomach began to rumble. “I can’t argue with that.”

I kept thinking about him shaving. As we went about our days, the memory of it kept floating to the top of my mind unbidden. I'd seen him shave hundreds of times before; I couldn't imagine why I was fixated upon it now. There was nothing special about his steady fingers wielding a blade against tender, paper-thin skin, nothing remarkable about the way his attention was fixed upon his work. That I was allowed to indulge myself in watching him shave in the morning was the purest domesticity. I had never considered myself a marrying man, but I knew this was the closest I would ever get. It was bliss, and I started making excuses to interrupt him during his morning toilet so that I would be allowed to stay and watch.

Finally, after perhaps a week of such nonsense, he stopped in the middle of routine, shaving cream on half his face, and said, "Is there something in particular you want, or are you content with your voyeurism?"

I felt my whole face flush, and I put down the picture frame I had been dusting.

"This room is the cleanest it's ever been," he went on, "and I'm not saying I _mind_ at all, you're welcome to do as you like, but I just… in case there was something…."

"No," I said, sitting down on the bed. He turned around, his eyebrows raised. "It's nothing."

The eyebrows went higher.

"I do enjoy watching," I admitted. "I don't know."

"Are you bored? Do you need a case? Shall we go on a holiday?" He turned back to the mirror and continued his careful work. "I could use a few days away from the city, if you think it would help."

I thought about it. I wasn't feeling the usual itch of ennui that descended after a particularly engaging case. The last one had been satisfying: not too complicated, but with enough interest to hold my attention for several days. No, instead of becoming depressed that such things didn't happen all the time, I had become fixated upon this.

"Do you want me to shave _you_?" he asked, ignorant of my private thoughts.

The suggestion stopped my brain in its tracks. "What, shave my face?"

He shrugged one shoulder. "If you like."

"All right," I said. I fingered the corner of my jaw. I had never been particularly good at growing facial hair, and usually only shaved every few days. Still, there was enough of a hint of stubble to be worth the efforts.

"Right," Watson said. "Just let me finish up. The water's still hot enough."

He finished, wiped his mouth and cheeks, and offered me the seat. I sat, facing the mirror. He stood behind me, and his hands came down heavy on my shoulders. He bent to kiss the top of my head. I relaxed back against his middle, peering upside-down at his smiling face. He was slightly flushed from the warm water and the abrasion. He kissed my mouth and said, "Now, I'm not very practised at doing this for other people."

"I trust you." 

His eyes glittered. "I hope you remember that when I've got a blade at your throat."

It made my blood sing in my veins, and I reached up to pull him down for another kiss. "I will," I promised.

He reached around me for the wash basin. I could smell him: soap and clean linen and under it the warm scent of his body. He laid the hot, damp cloth upon the lower half of my face, and I closed my eyes. I listened to the delicate clink of the soap brush handle against the ceramic of the dish as he rubbed the soap cake into a lather. He put it down with a rattle, and then I heard him pick up the razor. He tested the edge with his thumbnail, as if he hadn't just shaved his own face, and then I heard him give it a few strokes along the sharpening strap. By then the heat had soaked into my skin, and when he removed the cloth I shivered at the kiss of the cool air.

I jumped at the first touch of the soft brush on my cheek. Watson murmured an apology as he smeared it across my face, so I reached behind me to squeeze his shin in reassurance. He had both hands upon my face, holding me and moving me to do his work. When I was entirely lathered, he leaned back to admire his work and made a noise of satisfaction.

Then the blade entered the picture. He did the left side of my face first, carefully scraping away the soap foam and the hair with it. He was infinitely patient with my upper lip, imploring me to make several ridiculous and necessary faces, and treated my lower lip and chin with the same care. His hands were gently confident, and his work with the razor could have paralleled any barber of my choosing. I felt like soft clay in his hands, manipulated and massaged, and I marvelled that I hadn't asked him to do this before. It was like having an itch scratched: at once magnificent and slightly unsatisfying. 

"Holmes" Watson said softly, and I opened my eyes to look at him. He was concentrating unnecessarily hard on my right mandible. "Is there anywhere else you'd…" He was blushing. "You'd like me to shave?"

I frowned. "Anywhere else?"

"It's only an idea," he said, defensive now, so I reached back once more and gripped him by the calf.

"Perhaps shaving my legs would make putting on ladies' stockings easier," I mused aloud, trying to follow the line of his thinking. Usually I was so good at it. "But I have no need for a disguise right now. I supposed shaving my underarms might be novel, but frankly agonising as the hair grew out again."

He pursed his lips a little, his blush deepening.

" _Oh_ ," I said, sitting up straighter. "What, really, John?"

"Just," he said, "if you like."

"Do you think that would… be amusing to you?"

The corner of his mouth twitched "I've never tried it, myself."

I narrowed my eyes at him. Whores shaved their nethers to discourage vermin and disease. He'd admitted to a few encounters with ladies of leisure. Inference: he'd found that particular arrangement exciting.

"Is that how you'd… like me to be?"

"Goodness," Watson said, "no, not all the time." He laughed, embarrassed. "I was just thinking how lovely it feels to be freshly shaven and, and your cheek against mine, and then I began to imagine other things." He swallowed. "We don't have to. It's not an imperative. I don't want or need anything. You're splendid as you are, every bit of you."

I turned on the seat to be able to look at him properly. He cupped my face. I covered his hand with mine. "How do we go about it?"

He had me strip, and meanwhile went out to lock the sitting room door. It was nearly nine in the morning, and here we were getting undressed again. I straightened the blankets on the bed and reclined atop them. The quilt could get soap on it and be changed more easily than the sheets. Watson returned, closed the bedroom door, and brought the wash basin, mug, towel, and razor over to the bed.

"Surely you do not propose to shave my private parts fully dressed," I complained, as he moved to kneel on the coverlet.

"I'm not _fully_ dressed," he protested.

"Braces are beyond half dressed," said I. "I insist that you remove them."

He obliged with a sigh, sliding them off his shoulders.

"Trousers too, I think."

These were unbuttoned and dropped.

"Shirt, vest, and socks, and then you may stop."

"Oh, for heaven's sake," Watson grumbled, but did as I bid. With he in his drawers and I in the altogether, it did not feel quite so ridiculous or clinical. Now I could admire his broad shoulders, the hair upon his chest and belly and arms, the starburst of his old scar. I half-sat to kiss him, and he bore me down to the bed again in his eagerness.

"Now, now, John," I scolded. "The water will get cold if you become diverted."

"Quite right," said he, pushing himself up again. We giggled, and then he knelt deliberately between my thighs and parted them with his warm hand. 

"I shall have to give you a trim," Watson murmured, producing a a pair of short scissors. Glancing at me for reassurance, he began to cut away the coarse curls. His hands were steady, and he trimmed me down to a short scruff in a minute or so. My prick looked enormous now, standing out stark and heavy from my naked groin.

Watson's lower lip was caught between his teeth and a flush had risen high in his cheeks. He put the scissors aside and gathered the cut hair into the palm of his hand to discard.

"Ready?" he asked. "Holmes, I… I will be very careful, but if you want me to stop at any point, just… please say so."

"Do I strike you as the kind of man to whom things are done without my permission?"

"No," he said, grinning. He dipped the cloth into the water again.

It was still hot, so the touch made me jump. Watson wrapped the cloth around my prick; I was half-hard, the shaving of my face having excited me somewhat, but not so hard that I stood upright. Instead I flopped, plainly ridiculous.

Watson lathered the soap again while we waited. My prick twitched, filling and thickening under the weight of his gaze. His own drawers were tented. He removed the towel and began to apply the lathered brush to my groin, painting me with thick shaving soap.

I exhaled, trembling with excitement. The room was warm with the fire in the grate, but the air prickled along my skin. Watson's soft brush caused a cool, tingling sensation all throughout my groin. He put the brush back in the mug and set the mug on the quilt, and took up his razor.

He met my eyes and I nodded. "Go on," I said, my voice hoarse. Watson gripped my prick with one hand, gentle but firm, and touched the razor to my skin over my pubic bone.

The soap came away in wide stripes, and the black hair with it. Between strokes, he wiped the blade clean on the towel that was draped over his shoulder. My cock was now stiff and eager in his hand, but his touch was so careful as to be almost impersonal. Not that there was anything impersonal about having your lover kneeling between your naked thighs with his hands on your jewels. I was beginning to leak. I reached down to touch whatever I could of Watson, and found the caps of his knees beneath my thighs.

Watson gave the whole area another careful pass with the razor, and then turned his attentions, and the hot towel, to my bollocks. With the application of heat, they loosened and Watson was able to pull the soft skin taut.

I held my breath, but he was as good as his word. He shaved them slowly, gently, until I could feel air on places that had not been exposed in a long time. I wondered if he were going to carry on until my entire body was as bare as a babe's.

He didn't. He wiped me clean and draped the hot towel over me again while he rummaged in his supplies. I wanted to rut against the towel, I was so hard. Desire had flooded my body, radiating from my parted thighs out to my fingers and toes. My nipples were peaked and tender.

"Holmes," Watson said, "do me a favour and remove the towel."

As soon as it was moved, he dabbed me with his witch hazel water. I yelped, for at first it burned, but in a moment the sting dissipated and was replaced with a soothing tingle. My fist tightened on the wet towel, causing a little stream of water to run down my wrist. Watson took it gently from me.

"How does that feel?" he asked. His fingertips were gentle upon my bare skin; I shivered hard. He stroked his thumbs up to the base of my cock and away again, and I felt my prick jump in anticipation. When he circled his forefinger and thumb around the girth of it, his palm against my pubis, the deep breath I'd taken shuddered out of me.

"Good," I managed.

He laughed. "It does," he agreed, drawing the circle of his fingers up the length of my shaft. We both watched the bead of fluid that was squeezed out the tip. He bent his head to lick it away, and my hands flew to his shoulders.

"Oh, God, Watson, finish it, will you?"

"Mm," he agreed, taking the head of my prick between his lips. It was hot and slick, and meanwhile his fingers played upon the bare skin of my bollocks, sending little sparks of sensation through me. 

It didn't take long, I am not entirely ashamed to say. Every touch was heightened tenfold, and Watson touched me with such reverence. His warm palm cradling my bollocks made me groan, and the brush of his fingers at the sensitive base of my cock as he pulled me off into the heat of his mouth was heaven.

When I came, it was abrupt and abundant, and afterwards Watson knelt over me, his tongue in my mouth, both our hands on his rampant prick. He spurted onto my belly and bare groin, and with no hair to protect me (or to dirty) I was quite thoroughly anointed.

He then cleaned me again, with a towel gone mostly cold, apologising for the rashness of such an action. He was blushing furiously. I carded my fingers through his hair and said, "My dear boy, your loss of composure is utterly flattering, and I welcome it."

That only made him blush harder.

I should have expected, of course, that such sensitivity while naked would translate to a similar sensitivity while dressed. All day I could feel the texture of my drawers against my skin; my nerves were electrified. It was a boon that my last case was so recently completed, otherwise I doubted I'd be able to focus. I had worked through injury or illness before, but the temptation to _let_ myself be distracted was considerably greater.

Watson wasn't in any better of a state. He kept casting me heated looks, even when he thought I wasn't observing him, and would flush when I caught him. We went out for a long walk and a meal, in an attempt to stay the impulse to spend the afternoon in bed. By the time we returned to Baker Street I was on the edge of madness, and Watson had his hands in my trousers almost before the sitting room door was locked. We didn't achieve much that afternoon, nor late into the evening.

We were saved from ourselves the next day by a ring at the bell a little after eight, and the appearance of a constable from Scotland Yard. The extreme sensitivity of my shorn state had abated somewhat, but I could still feel the sensual brush of my clothes against my skin. I ignored it, priding myself upon my self control.

A university professor had gone missing, and the only clues were a wine glass and a smear of blood on his writing desk. The regular force had visited the scene, interviewed the wife, harangued the servants, and no doubt trampled on all the visible exterior clues, but I agreed to attend. Watson, naturally, came with me.

Upon our arrival at the Gordon Square townhouse, I saw that I was quite right about the state of things. The comings and goings of the police were well documented on the front walk, so I did a careful exterior examination of the house with that in mind. I collected a few pieces of information, dictating them to Watson as we went, and then moved indoors.

The wife was eager to talk to me: she was full of theories and speculation, and seemed to have decided what had happened before she had even summoned the police. He had been kidnapped. He had been murdered. He had been spirited away by elves. He had left clues for her. He was even now trying to contact her.

It was only through the persistence of my investigative style that I was able to pry the truth of the circumstances to her. She had heard a noise in the night and awoken to find her husband missing from their bed. Thinking he had simply risen to use the lavatory, which he always did and never was he quiet about it, she had gone back to sleep. In the morning, he hadn't returned, and a servant discovered blood and an open window in the study. It wasn't very illuminating, except that her demeanor planted a few more seeds in my mind.

Then Watson and I examined the study. I was deep in thought, and so I muttered observations aloud without checking to see that he was behind me taking notes. I was inspecting a ragged sliver of cloth caught in a splinter on the window sill when he leaned in and murmured, "Have you solved it?"

"Well," I said, peering still closer, "there are a few minor details to be cleared up, purely for my own curiosity, but, yes, I am confident in my conclusions."

"Good," Watson said, his voice dropping, "because your prick looks enormous."

I dropped my pocket magnifier on the floor and turned to stare at him. "I _beg_ your pardon?"

His mouth twitched in a hidden smile. "Absolutely gargantuan."

I looked down at myself, against my better judgement, knowing perfectly well that I was decent. "John--"

"Oh, not right _now_ ," he murmured, crouching to pick up the magnifier. He looked up at me, his head at the level of my groin, and then rose slowly. The back of his hand brushed ever so slightly against my trouser placket. "I was just thinking of last night, when you were buggering me, how enormous it looked when you--"

"John, _honestly_ ," I hissed.

He smirked and offered me the magnifier back. I took it, almost dropped it again, and put it away in my jacket pocket.

"Everything all right, Mr Holmes?" the constable asked.

I had to clear my throat twice. My cock felt heavy in my drawers and my heart was pounding. "Yes," I said, "Dr Watson was just reminding me of a-another case, with certain similarities to this one, during which I made a-an error of judgement." I dropped my voice to a whisper. " _Bringing you along_." I raised it again. "I've asked him to ensure I don't make it again, you see."

"Of course," the constable agreed. "Very sensible indeed. What was the error, may I ask?"

"Arrogance," I said, looking at him over John's shoulder. "Fortunately I have Dr Watson to keep me humble."

The constable looked thrilled to hear that I was capable of mistakes, or perhaps of recognising my own humanity, and nodded with vigour. "Quite so, Mr Holmes," he said. "In these situations, we must all stay humble."

"And focused," I muttered to Watson. "Professor Dalinger may be dead, you know."

Watson snorted. "Professor Dalinger is almost certainly with his mistress, if this bears any resemblance to the Mitchell-Warren case from two years ago."

I glared at him. It was the conclusion I had drawn as well. 

He smiled. "The complement stands."

"You--" I started, but I was already blushing. I whispered, "You wicked man," and turned my back on him.

Then, I'm ashamed to say, my interest in the case waned. I had solved it, and perhaps it would be a blessing upon the regular force to let them figure out the details on their own. I could point them in the right direction and take my leave, allowing the glory to slip away. I had more pressing needs to consider. One of them: taking my irreverent partner home and rogering him over the back of the settee with my so-called enormous prick. It was probably not as severe a punishment as it seemed when I first considered it.

No, he would almost certainly enjoy that.

The growing back period was a kind of agony. I was itchy and embarrassed and the regular application of lotions and witch hazel could only do so much. I made Watson swear he'd never shave me again, not for love or money, and he only looked a little disappointed. I suspected it wouldn't be the only time I allowed myself to be bared completely for his (and my) amusement. I was right.


End file.
